My current reading interest is trends in the school library world, and the only book I could find was School Library Media Centers in the 21st Century by Kathleen W. Craver (1994). It is staggering how the world has changed since then. My world, that of information, is now dominated by Google and Yahoo, so I picked up a copy of The Search by John Battelle (2005). Fascinating reading, especially when Battelle gets into future trends and intelligent searches. He describes IBM's WebFountain project that is annotating the web so information can be searched intelligently, a new approach to cataloging.
When this process results in intelligent searching cababilities-- essentially, a reference librarian in every search engine-- it will have a huge impact on how we teach students to access and use information. Will this new intelligent searching capacity also come with commercial content that will be problematic in an educational environment? If students can access information without a library facility or librarian, does this signal the demise of both?
For fun, try searching the Internet using whatever search engine appeals, for the name of the oldest known named author in the history of Western civilization. Or look on page 283 of The Search.
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Funny you should mention this subject. The Tribune just did an article on "Educating Educators." Teachers and Librarians got together for the Librarians to teach the teachers how to teach with primary sources through the Library of Congress grant. They were teaching them, among other things, how to navigate and learn ways to use the Library of Congress Web site as a tool in their classrooms. A three day workshop at UNC. It was interesting.
Keep on a postin'
Judy
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